All the way through this game the news kept rolling in. News from another world, but one painfully close for Manchester United and their fans.

On phone screens, the latest updates on Monday night's terrorist attack vied with the chronology of a football match that offered a refuge from horrors beyond comprehension.

Because technology has placed these addictive devices in our hands, a Europa League final is capable of sharing a news feed with an attack that killed 22 people at a pop concert, and injured many more.

There is no escaping reality. So all inside the Friends Arena fought to keep their concentration on the action: a second-tier European final that gave United a route back to the Champions League, and a chance to boast that they have won two of the four competitions they entered in 2016-'17.

One truth was evident, from the minute Jose Mourinho tried to beat down Ajax's youthful talent (average age 22 years and 282 days) with his textbook of direct play.

The swathe of United supporters to our right carried their city's trauma to Stockholm: visibly, that is, and not by journalistic supposition.

Behind the goal Sergio Romero would occupy in the first half, United fans draped a banner saying: "United Against Terrorism. Lest we Forget. 22.05.2017".

The flag disappeared before kick-off, then returned, then vanished again.

It may have fallen foul of football's intolerance of political statements inside stadiums. But the point was made, inside and out.

"Once a Manc always a Manc. RIP", ran another message displayed outside O'Leary's bar next to the ground.

And when the stadium managers, who showed great empathy, confused the crowd by calling for a minute's silence after the audience had already tried to observe one, the United end boomed with chants of "Manchester, Manchester".

People punched the air and jumped as they sang. You could see the emotion bursting out of spectators shouting not for their team so much as their violated city.

On a day when Chelsea's Premier League victory parade and a screening of the FA Cup final at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium were both cancelled on safety grounds, United's shot at redemption came in a Swedish city that has also been the victim of an attack this year, but radiates serenity and liberal values.

Not a bad place, then, to find calm, in the face of the realisation that Monday's suicide bomber was a student at Salford University, a 20-minute walk from Old Trafford.

United have become only the fifth club to win all three major European trophies, after Juventus, Ajax, Bayern Munich and Chelsea.

Liverpool tend to regard themselves as England's continental superpower (and no wonder, with five European titles), but United have their own fine tradition.

Directness

The 1968 European Cup win over Benfica at Wembley was the first by an English club - and there have been two since, unforgettably in 1999, and again in Moscow nine years later when Chelsea were the victims.

There were two subsequent salutary defeats to Barcelona, in 2009 and 2011, so this was their return to a stage where they will say they belong.

For much of this game, Ajax's smaller, younger team could not cope with United's directness, physicality and willingness to put the ball in the sky, for Marouane Fellaini, particularly, to win all the headers.

It wasn't pretty; effective would be the best way to describe United's victory.

But mechanical is fine, when it matters this much.

As the clock ran down, United's supporters roared their pleasure. Back home, we imagined, Manchester felt a semblance of normality again.